Quotes About Courage

You need courage to be creative. You need the courage to see things differently, courage to go against the crowd, courage to take a different approach, courage to stand alone, if you have to, courage to choose activity over inactivity.

Without courage, you cannot practice any other virtue. You have to have courage - courage of different kinds: first, intellectual courage, to sort out different values and make up your mind about which is the one which is right for you to follow. You have to have moral courage to stick up to that - no matter what comes in your way, no matter what the obstacle and the opposition is.

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads. Erica Jong To Cowardly Lion:"As for you my fine friend, you are a victim of disorganized thinking. You are under the unfortunate delusion that simply because you run away from danger, you have no courage. You're confusing courage with wisdom.Frank Morgan as the Wizard of Oz "Courage faces fear and thereby masters it."Martin Luther King, Jr. "These days I'm feeling all right'cept I can't tell my courage from my desperation

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage . . . . Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.

In my experience, God rarely makes our fear disappear. Instead, He asks us to be strong and take courage. What is courage? As Ordinary discovered, courage is not the absence of fear; rather, it's choosing to act in spite of the fear. You could say that without fear, you can't have genuine courage.

It is not the courage to be that we must develop as much as the courage to become. We are responsible for our destiny. The meaning of life is not located in some hidden crevice in the womb of nature but is created by free persons, who are aware that they are responsible for their own futures and have the courage to take this project into their own hands.

The quality that defines us as Americans is the courage to respond to being hit. The courage to root out and destroy the killers. And, most importantly, the courage to hold on to our values and protect our hard-won freedoms while doing it.

The man who can face vilification and disgrace, who can stand up against the popular current, even against his friends and his country when he know he is right, who can defy those in authority over him, who can take punishment and prison and remain steadfast-that is a man of courage. The fellow whom you taunt as a 'slacker' because he refuses to turn murderer-he needs courage. But do you need much courage just to obey orders, to do as you are told and to fall in line with thousands of others to the tune of general approval and the Star Spangled Banner?

Of course, we will face fear, experience ridicule, and meet opposition. Let us have the courage to defy the consensus, the courage to stand for principle. Courage, not compromise, brings the smile of God's approval.

this is what I know about courage: You don't have to think about courage to have it. You don't have to feel courageous to be courageous. You don't sit down and say you're going to be courageous. At the moment of action, you don't see it as a courageous act. Courage is the most hidden thing from your eye or mind until after it's done. There's some inner something that tells you what's right. You know you have to do it to survive as a human being. You have no choice.

If you want to develop courage, then simply act courageously when it's called for. If you do something over and over again, you develop a habit. Some people develop the habit of courage. Some people develop the habit of non-courage.

Take courage and work on. Patience and steady work - this is the only way. Go on; remember - patience and purity and courage and steady work. . . . So long as you are pure, and true to your principles, you will never fail.

It is an error to suppose that courage means courage in everything.

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

The whole point of courage, to overcome your fear. That's the interesting thing, when courage bleeds through the fear.

Fear is not the opposite of courage. Fear is the catalyst of courage.

There is only one courage and that is the courage to go on dying to the past, not to collect it, not to accumulate it, not to cling to it. We all cling to the past and because we cling to the past we become unavailable to the present.

Justice is not available to all equally; it is something that many of us must struggle to achieve. As an elected official, I know that fighting for what is just is not always popular but it is necessary; that is the real challenge that public servants face and it is where courage counts the most. Without courage, our action or inaction results in suffering of the few and injustice for all.

It is a tragedy that we live in a world where physical courage is so common, and moral courage is so rare.

In short, we need to recover the courage we celebrate in our heroes, and in particular, the courage to tolerate, for the sake of a free society, a level of risk we hardly ever imagined in the past.

Courage is like—it’s a habitus, a habit, a virtue: You get it by courageous acts. It’s like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging.

To have courage, one must first be afraid. The deeper the fear, the more difficult the climb toward courage.

Think of all those ages through which men have had the courage to die, and then remember that we have actually fallen to talking about having the courage to live.

Of all the things about de Sade, I would argue he is funny. A lot of people didn't understand de Sade. No. 1, he is a very good writer, and No. 2, he had the courage to talk about a lot of things that in public, even now, almost nobody has the courage to talk about. He would do it with a kind of funny way - not the stories themselves, but the way he tells them. He is never serious.

Acquire the courage to believe in yourself. Many of the things that you have been taught were at one time the radical ideas of individuals who had the courage to believe what their own hearts and minds told them was true, rather than accept the common beliefs of their day.

Courage is the human virtue that counts most-courage to act on limited knowledge and insufficient evidence. That's all any of us have.

Ordinary people, even weak people, can do extraordinary things through temporary courage generated by a situation. But the person of character does not need the situation to generate his courage. It is a part of his being and a standard approach to all life's challenges.

Courage is what preserves our liberty, safety, life, and our homes and parents, our country and children. Courage comprises all things.

You will have to make up for the smallness of your size by your courage and selfless devotion to duty, for it is not life that matters, but the courage, fortitude and determination you bring to it.

For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point and does not break.

Whereas moral courage is the righting of wrongs, creative courage, in contrast, is the discovering of new forms, new symbols, new patterns on which a new society can be built.

Courage is contagious. If a leader shows courage, others get the idea.

Saba used to say there was a difference between bravery and courage. Bravery was doing something dangerous without thinking. Courage was walking into danger, knowing full well the risks.

Moral courage, to me, is much more demanding than physical courage.

Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.

I thought, 'There are a lot of poets who have the courage to look into the abyss, but there are very few who have the courage to look happiness in the face and write about it,' which is what I wanted to be able to do.

If contemplation of other people's pain just increases distress, then I think we should see it in another way. If we don't center too much on ourselves, then [we] increase our courage and our determination to remedy the pain, not our distress. If we have unconditional compassion, then it increases our courage. So that's the difference, self-centered motivation versus altruistic motivation.

My work is to be honest. My work is to try to think clearly, then have the courage to make sure that what I say is the truth.

Patient acceptance is often considered a weak and passive response to problems that we do not have the power or courage to solve. In reality, however, being patient is far from being passive. There is nothing strong or courageous in reacting to hardship or insults with anger - all we are doing is being defeated by our delusions.

Failure to summon forth the courage to risk a nondogmatic and nonevasive stance on such crucial existential matters can also blur our ethical vision. If our actions in the world are to stem from an encounter with what is central in life, they must be unclouded by either dogma or prevarication. Agnosticism is no excuse for indecision. If anything, it is a catalyst for action; for in shifting concern away from a future life and back to the present, it demands an ethics of empathy rather than a metaphysics of fear and hope.

Now, after years of observation and enough courage to admit what I have observed, I try to plant peace if I do not want discord; to plant loyalty and honesty if I want to avoid betrayal and lies.

I was fortunate that when I was first starting out in New Orleans, I had a remarkable high-school teacher. And she was a great, great influence in my life, and I think she gave me the courage and the confidence to go forward into the real world. She instilled in me that my dreams were important and that what I was passionate about was most important.

Courage means willing to risk everything.

Our young people have come to look upon war as a kind of beneficent deity, which not only adds to the national honor but uplifts a nation and develops patriotism and courage. That is all true. But it is only fair, too, to let them know that the garments of the deity are filthy and that some of her influences debase and befoul a people.

I think death has a right to its own courage and dignity and self-respect.

How many of us have had our hearts broken for whatever reason yet find the courage to continue to reach out for love. Emotional vulnerability is true strength to me.

California is a place of invention, a place of courage, a place of vision, a place of the future. People who made California what it is were willing to take risks, think outside convention and build.

I just want to keep having the courage to raise the bar for myself, and to keep striving for excellence in artistic integrity and public service. And to continue to challenge myself to move outside of my comfort zone, personally and professionally.